While you lot have made absolutely no secret of your contempt for latter-day Call of Duty games, as I understand it they’re pretty big business on PC nonetheless. Despite others’ best, sneery comment-based efforts, people still buy them. So there will be a large and enthuastic audience for the news that DLC map pack First Strike has been given a PC release date, having already been available on 360 for some time. You may well not be that enthusiastic audience, but I’m going to tell you anyway – knowing what the biggest, most aloof publisher is up to in terms of PC gaming is always useful.
March 26 is the day that First Strike pops onto a Steam order page near you. That’ll be this Saturday, then. It’s $15/£11.50, which is a frankly absurd asking price for five new multiplayer maps. A captive audience is a publisher’s perfect dream, I suppose. If it is your sort of thing and you don’t sensibly balk at the horror-price, you can pre-order now for a 10% saving. I rather imagine it’ll sell frighteningly well despite the price, and despite the performance complaints levelled at CODBLOPS multiplayer on release.

The late release date isn’t a matter of Activision considering the PC an afterthought (they may not always treat it well, but they’re well aware that it can mean enormo-revenues), but of a Microsoft-enforced delay. First Strike was originally bound up in an Xbox 360 exclusive, so the PS3 has been similarly made to wait.

Four new standard multiplayer maps and one new zombie map: these are the contents. Here’s what they look like (on console, at least).

You’d have thought they’d have found a way to make player run animations not look like puppets with their legs sewn on back to front by now, wouldn’t you? The jet-powered death-platform in the zombie map looks like a good time, though.

Oh, ‘Meh’ Squadron? Look, I understand you don’t care, but if you could for once resist the urge to tell everyone else just how hard you don’t care, that would be super.

One thing that always impresses me is how *not* good it looks. I mean, I realise I’m a horrible graphics whorey person for doing it, but like, people *praise* this! The explosions clip, even, I thought we got past that years ago. The textures are icky and the lighting is almost nonexistent.

Also, $15 for 5 new maps? Again? That people buy that in large enough amounts to justify doing it again depresses me.

Exactly my thoughts when I played it, and this video looks even worse. I expected to be excited by the visual elements at the very least, but in reality they look like reused assets from COD4 on a very tired engine.

This video really highlights the lack of graphical fidelity, which appears to be one of the primary selling points.

BC2 Vietnam had a similar number of maps for a similar price, but there was a whole lot more content besides.

I think this recent craze of DLC might actually reduce people’s tendency to pirate (single player games at least) as a lot of people are quite compulsive about not missing out on any content and the easiest way is to just buy the darn thing.

You’re assuming that DLC for single player games (such as Dragon Age) cannot be pirated just as easily as the game itself.

If anything, multiplayer DLC is the real money spinner. Especially if you use the Halo model and actually start locking people out of game modes they used to be able access when DLC maps are added. If your friends buy in, you must also, or risk not being able to play online with them.

It’s just as easy, but takes longer to do. And it quite often is hard to find a crack for a game with the most recent updates. All I’m saying is DLC will make more people buy the game, as it is easier to get a “complete” game, which many people want. When bad DRM makes it easier to pirate the game than buy it, I think piracy will be greater.

It’s a shame Treyarch/Activision are marring blops with DLC mappacks, because it’s actually about as good as CoD4. Treyarch still haven’t fixed the few glaring balance issues in the game, either. Damn shame. :(

Admission; I am addicted to zombies.. Don’t touch MP. People say what they want about blops but zombies is a genuinely good formula. Endless waves of the undead, ever increasing difficulty, co-op that actually requires teamwork it works for me. But yea I’ll be coughing up for the maps or the 1 new zombie map rather. Gotta scratch the itch.

To this day it is still so bug ridden its just not worth trying to play it competitively. I seem to have a 40% chance of going on a server only to get super warp lags every minute or so where I have to stare at the ‘connection problem’ icon for 15 seconds or something.
You* ppls’ constant yelling for “dedi servers or naziism!!!” further destroyed my hope for a vanilla experiement of the game. I have to bear with shite servers where 17 year olds tell me to not use this and that weapon, not to sit down for a sec, not to run around with a knife for a sec, even not to effin jump on HC servers. Also not to use my perks, not to plan’t claymores, not to tube, and generally to play CS with a different engine and happier weapon spray. I want MW2 matchmaking back. DLC for MW2 may have looked 500 levels of ‘too expensive’, but if you enjoyed the game, that were the best 13 euros of your life……
From that perspective, if only blops would have worked -technically- as it was supposed to, I would have now bought the DLC. Zombies was also fun.

£11 was too much for the MW2 maps, and it’s too much for this offering as well. Which hasn’t stopped it reaching no.2 in Steam’s top sellers list.

I am intrigued to see how the DLC is handled with Dedicated Servers. Will players who don’t buy it be unable to join servers that have DLC maps in rotation? Will servers kick players when a DLC map pops up? Or will there be entirely seperate server browser for those with/without it?

It’ll be interesting to see if they can avoid splitting the player base while still making sure the new maps actually get played, If only because other games are probably going to follow this sort of DLC model – I expect there will be a Crysis 2 map pack at some point.

A server browser filter will let you filter out search results running DLC content that you don’t own. Meaning it will only show you servers that are not running DLC maps in their rotation. Non DLC owners can also join any server to play regular maps, but if a DLC map comes up in the rotation they will be kicked.

“The late release date isn’t a matter of Activision considering the PC an afterthought (they may not always treat it well, but they’re well aware that it can mean enormo-revenues), but of a Microsoft-enforced delay. First Strike was originally bound up in an Xbox 360 exclusive, so the PS3 has been similarly made to wait.”

It’s been out on PS3 for a few weeks now, i’d say the release date is timed to coincide with Crysis 2.

Indeed, the DLC was released on the 360 near the start of February, then it came out on the PS3 on the 3rd of March, and now finally it has appeared on PC along with the fixes that the consoles have had for literally months. So yes, we really are an afterthought.

Surely 5 free maps is the least they could do as a way of saying sorry for how horrible it was on release? But that would suggest there’s some humanity and humility on display at Activision and I make no such claims.

This is what happens when people play FPS games that deliberately knock out important features like map making software. This is also why modding is important. Independent of whether the game is any good, this is what happens when restrictive business models – closed architecture, modding ability stripped out and the ban enforced by crack lawyer teams.

The reason why this is important is that it’s a continuing proof of concept that profit from charging for map packs > profit from a map editor. And that’s an exceptionally bad thing for PC FPS gaming.

I am trying hard not to say “meh”. Can I instead say I regret buying CODBLOPS, haven’t played it since a week after release when they, brilliantly, released a patch that was meant to fix multiplayer but instead made it worse, have since uninstalled it, have no intention of ever installing it again, and will certainly not be paying any money for DLC? That’s more of a “Grr” than a “Meh”.

I’ve never understood why games are usually shown off on consoles. I understand that PC is not the main market for these games, but why not show off a better looking and more cleanly controlled gameplay video?

I was excited when I heard one map was set in the Kowloon Walled City, but apparently thats not the case. $15 map packs. Wow. Still, the target market for this game, generally only buy this and WoW, so the weight on their pocket is less.

Been playing CoDBLOPS since it came out, and to this day have not touched the single player campaign. I still don’t think I’ll be buying this, since not providing mod tools (and therefore not allowing community maps) and then charging a lot of money for what amounts to a couple new maps is kind of a slap in the face to the fans.

The biggest complaint I have is that so many things are broken about the maps they have now (spawn issues, railings that act like walls, impenetrable wooden barrels, etc.) they they haven’t fixed since release, and yet they’re making new maps that surely will have the same problems. :|